Heredity--Crosses--Psychological Observations.
The mental qualities of the Ainu are not many, and what they have are by
no means great; nor are they improved by education, for what they know
comes more from inheritance than personal acquirement, though naturally
every rule has its exceptions. I repeatedly noticed that talent, such as
it was, ran in certain families, the members of which were all more or
less intelligent. Certain families were more musical than others; other
families were more artistic--if, indeed, such a word could be applied to
the very low development of the artistic faculty when at its best among
the hairy people. Various members of one household were potently insane;
others were as potently idiotic. I shall not class under this heading of
heredity transmitted disease, like leprosy, consumption, &c., but I
shall limit myself to heredity in physical traits and mental qualities.
Unfortunately, with the Ainu intercourse between the sexes is so
imperfectly regulated as to often lead one to erroneous conclusions. The
reader may easily imagine the difficulty of establishing precise rules
of transmission in a race like the Ainu, where castes are not marked,
with the exception of the chieftainship in each village, the only
necessary qualifications for which are a sound, sharp intellect, a
strong physique, and personal courage. The office is hereditary if these
qualifications are also inherited; but should the sons or brothers of
the chief prove unworthy of his place, the Ainu would assemble in a
"village council" and elect another strong, clear-headed, and brave man
in place of the _roi fainéant_ thus summarily deposed. These chiefs have
no absolute authority, though the men often consult them in their
quarrels and difficulties, which they are asked to settle. Thus, because
of these qualities necessary for the office, these chiefs are a slightly
superior type to the other natives; for with savages, as with civilised
people, sharp-witted, strong, and brave men are naturally of a finer
type than those who are their inferiors in these qualities: but the
difference among the best Ainu and the worst is so small that I do not
feel justified in classing chiefs as of a different caste. Besides,
exceptional beauty, strength, or larger stature is not necessarily
transmitted in the families of chiefs, nor do the Ainu themselves
consider them better-looking than others.
As Ainu laws of marriage have no relation to the physical and moral
improvement of the race, the only way of classifying the natives for
purposes of heredity is by tribes, each village being considered as a
tribe. Ainu villages are generally very small, and the inhabitants of
each village intermarry among themselves, therefore each member of the
community is in some way related to every other member; hence heredity
in certain physical traits, mental qualities, and diseases shows itself
in one community and not in another. The difficulty of tracing the exact
connection of each individual with his or her relations beyond the
acknowledged father and mother also baffles research in more minute
details. Abnormal formations are sometimes transmitted to many members
of one tribe, as, for instance, the hare-lip and webbed fingers, of
which deformities two or three specimens could be found in a small
village numbering fifteen or twenty houses. Malformation of the
umbilicus is common--sometimes in almost every member of one small
community--while it is very rare in others. Children are mostly affected
by this, as in some villages the cord is not treated at all at birth;
and this leads to an abnormality till the child grows older, when the
few who survive seem to get all right. In other villages the cord is
fastened in a very primitive, not to say imperfect, manner, with a
common string of _Ulmus campestris_ fibre.
Albinism is very uncommon among the Ainu. I do not know of any case when
it has been transmitted, as albinos are greatly disregarded by the Ainu,
and, I was told, seldom marry.
Red hair, or hair with red shades in it, is common among the Ainu of
the north-east coast of Yezo, and also among the Kurilsky Ainu of
Shikotan, where nearly all the children have light hair. It darkens
considerably as they grow older, as many of the men said they had light
hair when young, which turned dark with age. Members of certain
communities have inherited the love of bear-hunting; others the love of
fishing; some tribes have a musical aptitude, and a certain artistic
talent for rough ornamentations on wood; others have developed their
inherited power of sustaining hunger and thirst. The only characteristic
which all the different tribes have inherited, without exception, is
love for intoxicating drinks; and this love is not only inherited by
thoroughbred Ainu, but also by half-castes.
Mixed marriages between Japanese and Ainu are frequent, but the progeny
are unfortunate beings, of whom a large percentage die when very young:
those who live are generally malformed, ill-natured, and often idiotic.
Their sight and hearing are not so acute as with the pure Ainu, and
crosses are said to be sterile, with very few exceptions. If children of
second crosses are born they seldom live to be more than five years old.
Half-breeds are invariably from a Japanese man with an Ainu woman, but
occasionally an Ainu man marries or cohabits with a half-caste woman. I
have never seen a pure-blood Ainu man marry a pure-blood Japanese woman.
The majority of half-breeds are males: I should think two-thirds males
and one-third females. The half-caste women are physically finer than
the men, but they are said to be very generally, if not uniformly,
sterile.
The products of the first cross greatly resemble in general look the
Ainu parent, without being quite as hairy, though still very hairy; but
a strange peculiarity is, that they get bald while quite young. One can
easily detect them by their eyes, which are frequently like those of the
Japanese, by the wide flat forehead, and by the pose of the head, which
inclines forward. They generally walk with their toes turned in, instead
of keeping their feet perfectly straight, like the pure Ainu. The moral
and intellectual position of these half-breeds is a pitiful one. They
are rejected by both the Ainu and Japanese, and are held inferior to
both alike.
A high moral standard, whether got from philosophic breadth or Christian
virtues, does not suit a despised barbarian race like the Ainu. Nothing
could or does kill them quicker than civilisation. Experiments have been
tried to civilise certain Ainu: they were made to wash, bathe, and live
in comfortable, clean quarters: they were instructed and got good food;
but after a few months they had to be sent back to their native place
and ways, for civilisation only killed them.
The half-castes have none of the good qualities of either race. They are
neither as brave as the Ainu nor courteous and light-hearted like the
Japanese. The following remarks, which I take direct from my diary, were
written by me between Shimokebo and Tomakomai, on the south-west coast
of Yezo, where many half-breeds are found along the sea-shore, and I
shall pass them on untouched to my readers.
"The Ainu along this coast were decidedly ugly. Many half-breeds are
also found along this coast. These half-breeds invariably grow bald in
early life, whereas the Ainu do not. The hair on their back, arms, and
legs is not so long or so thick as with the pure Ainu. Their teeth are
neither so strong nor so sound. As is usually the case when a mixture of
two or more races takes place, the lower and upper jaws not being of the
right proportion, it follows as a matter of course that unusual pressure
and friction injure and wear out the enamel of the teeth, thus causing
premature decay. The Americans and Australians are good examples of this
premature decay caused by the disproportion of the upper and lower jaws.
Also, teeth which do not fit well together sometimes grow so long as to
be a nuisance to the person who owns them. I found that these
half-breeds have all the bad qualities of both the Ainu and the
Japanese, and have not retained any of the good ones. They are
ill-tempered, lazy, and vindictive. It is well to mention that, on the
Japanese side, they have come mostly from the criminals exported by the
Japanese Government, which fact partly explains why they are so
evil-minded and untrustworthy. Instead of falling into the more
civilised ways of the Japanese, these half-breeds prefer the wild life
of their Ainu ancestors; and if anything they are wilder than the Ainu
themselves. Insanity is very common among half-breeds. The head is in
most instances of an abnormal size; the frontal bone is generally more
sloping than with the thoroughbred Ainu; and though the skull be wide
from one temple to the other, it is not spacious enough from the frontal
bone to the back of the head. They have heads so shaped that the
animal propensities are in excess of the moral and mental
faculties. In thoroughbred Ainu I found the bumps of amativeness,
philoprogenitiveness, and tune very well developed. In the half-breeds
these bumps hardly show at all, and in some cases the back of the
head--where the two first bumps are found--is almost flat.
"Ainu half-breeds never live to be very old. They are often affected
with rheumatism--_kaki_, a disease peculiar to the Far East--leprosy,
and consumption, and they suffer from these diseases much more than do
the pure Ainu. I found leprosy quite common among half-breeds--while I
have seen but few Ainu affected with it. In most instances, though,
leprosy had only attained its first stages--contraction of fingers and
subsequent dropping off of the three phalanges, ears, and nose; but this
may be explained by the fact that the sufferers in general succumb
before the disease attains its more serious character, when the whole
body is visibly affected by it."
Precise laws as to the degree of quickness of perception, power of
reasoning, and learning of the Ainu race cannot be given, for, as I have
mentioned before, almost each individual would require a special rule
for himself. My readers may have noticed that, while some Ainu were but
little above monkeys, others were sharp, and gave answers very much to
the point. This may apparently be regarded as a contradiction on my part
by people who have neither lived with savages, nor studied the
temperament of beasts. But it is not a contradiction. There are in this
world clever monkeys and stupid monkeys: some can never be made to learn
any tricks; others will learn them in no time. Intelligence is
instinctive, and not acquired, though of course it can be greatly
developed with education; thus, the Ainu are instinctively intelligent,
but I wish my readers clearly to understand that their intelligence does
not go much further than that of an intelligent monkey, though of course
the Ainu have the advantage over beasts of being able to talk, and
therefore, to a limited extent, discuss and combine. The Ainu memory is
a perfect blank in certain respects, as with arithmetic, science,
mechanics, reading, writing, drawing, and delineating maps; while in
other directions it seems to be fairly keen, as in hunting, fishing,
tracking, and acquiring languages up to a certain point. This last
faculty is noticeable in nearly all the lowest races, as the Australian
aborigines, the Tasmanian natives (now extinct), the Tierra del
Fuegians, &c. The Ainu ideas of time are vague, and if you add to that
the extreme difficulty which they experience in counting even up to ten,
and their inability to count beyond that number, it is easy to
understand why we can never learn the exact age of Ainu individuals.
Like the monkeys, the Ainu cannot concentrate their attention, and they
are easily wearied. Beads and shiny objects have a fascination for them;
but other objects, even perfectly new to them, arouse but little
curiosity, which soon passes, and they show no intelligence and less
imagination as to the probable use of these strange objects. They show
no inquisitiveness, and no wish to be taught the use of anything new and
unfamiliar.
It will be remembered that at Yamakubiro, on the Tokachi River, beyond
the natural astonishment caused by the first appearance of my ponies,
the strange baggage, and myself, the Ainu did not pay much attention to
this novel sight, and did not show any wish to have it explained, while
more civilised people, like the Japanese, would not have been satisfied
until I had shown and explained every article in my possession, and
allowed each person to try its use, &c., after which they would talk for
hours of what they had seen. The Ainu are not "built" so, and therefore
they have never made any progress. In the more civilised parts of Yezo
we have a proof of it. Their backwardness in acquiring the habits and
customs of their conquerors the Japanese, arises from incapacity more
than from conservatism. Yet for all that the Ainu are so incapable of
improving themselves, they are very persevering in what they do attempt,
as in their rough wooden carvings, the hollowing of their "dug-outs,"
the construction of their wooden tools and weapons, the weaving of their
rough garments, and the ornamentation thereof; but in all these they
appear to act more automatically than with keen and constructive
intelligence.
The Ainu are not to be taken _au pied de la lettre_, for the illusions
produced by ignorance and untutored imagination prevent anything like
literal accuracy; but they are not what we may call conscious and
immoral liars. A good example of this is my adventure at Horobets, when,
although they knew that they would be severely punished by the Japanese
policeman, the Ainu confessed their attack on me, and did not attempt
either denial or evasion. They are often plucky, and even distinctly
courageous; as, when out bear-hunting, a man armed only with a large and
not over sharp knife unhesitatingly attacks this formidable beast, who
sits up on his hind quarters, sure to crush the life out of his
assailant should he miss his stroke. The Ainu, protecting his head with
his left arm, and having taken the precaution to cover his back with
skins, goes merrily for the embrace; and while Bruin squeezes, the hairy
man splits its body open with the large knife.
The Ainu are cool-blooded. They are not subject to strong emotions, and
therefore they are not much affected by dreams and nightmares. They are
not affectionate except for a momentary impulse; but, like most animals,
they are faithful when they love. Mothers are fond of their children
till they have reached puberty; but after that the affection seems to
fade away. Paternal love is much less strong.
The pure Ainu are comparatively honest people, which may be due to the
incapacity for being dishonest. In a country where there is no exact
definition of property, where anybody can get what he requires without
resorting to theft, there is no reason why everybody should not be
honest. Then, according to Ainu ideas, stealing is not always stealing.
For instance, if an Ainu, without asking, takes away some of the salmon
caught by one of his hairy brethren, he will be blamed for it, he will
get into a row, and probably be beaten; but if the theft is perpetrated
on a Japanese or a stranger he will be praised, though the Ainu well
knows that he is not acting right. Their desire is stronger than their
conscience, such as it is; and having no laws of their own to rule them
worth speaking of, they often do according to their desire, without
deserving the accusation of conscious dishonesty. It is exactly the
same case as when a dog jumps on the dining-table when everybody is
absent and carries off the leg of mutton which he knows he ought not to
touch; but the temptation was too strong, and he could not resist it.
The Ainu are fond of independence, though in many instances I found them
gentle, and apparently submissive to a stronger will than their own. The
field of their brain-power is of course very narrow, and the same rough,
rude, primitive thoughts and ideas are constantly repeated in their
conversation as well as in their designs.
[Illustration: NAKED AINU MAN FROM THE NORTH-EAST COAST OF YEZO, PACKING
SEAWEED FOR WINTER USE.]